Highlights from The Exam Man podcast Season 1, Episode 14
Simon Cherriman, a Director at Tutors & Exams, joined the Examscreen team on The Exam Man podcast back in late June. Simon gave us the lowdown on the important work that they do for learners, regardless of age or background, as well as sharing with us his route to working in exams.
Tutors & Exams are a company that facilitate private candidates with opportunities to sit exams- what's the definition of a private candidate, John?
A private candidate would typically be somebody who is not a student at a school, basically. Someone who is not a registered pupil at a school exam centre. Someone who is outside of the education system, but who is looking for an opportunity to sit an exam to gain a qualification. This might be because they are older- people who have left school, but who want to come back and gain qualifications. That's quite common, I think particularly in things like GCSE English and Maths where they're often required for employment. Home educated and excluded students. Anyone who’s just sort of outside the system.
Then, you also have students who are home educated, who don't necessarily have a school that they might be able to sit exams in. They might use a private exam centre, like Tutors & Exams. Also, excluded students too- anyone who's just sort of outside of the system. It's a really important function. Any exam centre can accept private candidates, so obviously schools can accept private candidates as well. But it is really useful to have these sorts of facilities available as well, because often schools can't accommodate large numbers of private candidates. And often a school is not necessarily an appropriate environment for someone who's outside the system to take their exams. And so it's a valuable part of the entire exam system.
Could you tell us a little bit about Tutors & Exams, Simon?
It started 10 years ago, so it's our 10th anniversary this year on the 23rd of August. The company is run by a couple of people, Jen and Chris, who have a lot of experience as an examination officer and awarding organisation manager. About 10, 11 years ago they started to think that private candidates needed a place to have their assessments done. They decided to set up a centre in Coventry at that time. The first year there were 35 candidates, and that was deemed to be a success. And from there we then went from Coventry to Bolton and then we opened a centre in Wimbledon. Then CAGs came along, followed by TAGs. We’ve subsequently opened centres in St Neots, Belfast, Doncaster, High Wycombe, Taunton, Romford, and late last year, we opened our 10th centre in Birmingham. So, yeah, a decent geographical spread.
What was the strategy about where you opened centres?
When you look at a map of England, you know, we can't be everywhere for everybody- but we are clearly in the large conurbations, so Wimbledon and Romford in London and in Birmingham and Coventry. They started in Coventry because that's where that's where they live. Coventry was the obvious first place but in opening in Birmingham- it’s the second city, so again a big population there. took us into the second City. Bolton and Doncaster- you kind of go left and right at the Pennines, Taunton in the southwest. We then went to High Wycombe, sitting above London, and out towards the Fens and towards East Anglia. It's just trying to get that geographical spread but acknowledging that you can't be everywhere for everybody.
I remember when we opened Doncaster centre, I had an email from a lady saying when are you coming to the north? I said we are in Doncaster, we're in the north. I live in West Sussex so once you get past Watford, we are heading north anyway. Fast forward a couple of years. My youngest daughter went to Newcastle University, and as we drove past Doncaster and still had two hours to go, I understood where she was coming from. I got it.
We looks where the applicants are coming from. We can't be in St. Ives in Cornwall, but Taunton sort of starts to cover off a lot of the Southwest. Romford starts to pick up a bit of Kent, East Sussex, along with Wimbledon picking up Surrey, West Sussex etc. I wouldn't say the centres are always within easy reach. But within reach, yes.
Do you feel like you've got the geography covered now? Or are there plans to open more centres?
That’s always the million-dollar question. I think to be fair, we just opened Birmingham late last year, we'll look at how everything's panning out. But we never say never. Yeah. We've got 10 centres now across the UK. It does take quite a lot of coordination, especially when it comes to summer exams. So we'll sort of take a step back at the end of the summer.
How do you work across those locations? Have you got staff based near them?
We resource our centres with a centre manager and exams manager and in some centres an exams assistant as well. Every centre has their own staff. And then as I'm sure you have in your school, an army of invigilators, literally an army of invigilators to support every centre and they do an amazing job. If there's any of our invigilators out there listening, thank you. You've done an amazing job this summer- without the invigilators it would be a real challenge and you need a good spread because the exam season goes for such a long time.
Are you able to offer more than just the summer exams to people you're recruiting as invigilators, or is it just focused around that?
We obviously have the autumn series, which is a bit more condensed now that Pearson IGCSEs have come into the autumn series, and we also have resits. So that's very much part and parcel. We also have our mocks as well, in September and in March, and we also have international A Levels in January. And over and above that we run functional skills and AAT. Plus, we're looking to run some other alternate exam offerings in due course. There's a steady stream there and plenty of opportunity. They are a great asset to the organisation, without a doubt.
When a candidate signs up to do exams with you, you offer them the opportunity to do mock exams as well, is that right?
Absolutely. We run mocks in September for the autumn series. And then in March for the summer series, we run two types of mocks- one is an unmarked mock. So that's really designed for a candidate who has maybe never sat an exam. When you're sitting exams in mainstream education, and if you've been through mainstream education, everything is kind of laid out for you, as you progress through the two years to GCSEs and then to A Levels you’ll sit your mocks, etc. You get the exam experience, so something that we're very passionate about is providing an experience of this for home educated candidates. Sometimes when it comes to their first exam, that's actually the first time they've sat any exam, and it might even be the first time they've been to the exam centre.
So, there's two types- there's an unmarked mock, that gets you the experience of sitting an exam in the exam environment. And then there's the mock, for those who want to know how they're doing, and where they sit with regards to what further studies they need to do. We also do centre visits. So again, you're going to school day in day out, you know where your exam is going to be- the big school hall, you get marched in, you know where you're going, I mean, it's a huge place, you can just about see the board at the end of the room, and you sit your exam, you know what you're going to do, you know where you're going to go. For a number of our candidates, they don't. So we offer centre visits, so they can become familiar with the environment, but also with the staff so that they can meet them as well. On that first day, everything's not a new experience, there's a little bit that they can associate with.
What can you tell us about the candidates?
So basically, we cater for all of those outside of mainstream education, in essence, so if you're home educated, you're a private candidate, you might be a resit, you might actually want to do a career change. Therefore, you might need the higher grade in maths or English, so you need to come and sit that- it is a broad church. Last year our youngest candidate was 10. Our eldest candidate was 74. He was a retired teacher who used to teach A Level Latin, and he just wanted to see whether he could remember it!
If you're a private candidate and you're able to be sat in a school, there's all these kids in school uniform. You’re the one that's not and you kind of stick out a little bit. You don't when you come to sit at a private exam centre- everybody is different. Everybody's got a journey, actually, as well- everyone's got a different story, not that we know every one of them. But for some, they're looking for that nine A*s you know, they want to go to college, or go on to university. And for some, maybe the achievement is actually sitting the exam. That might be the achievement. We cater for a wide range of candidates and their requirements.
Do you encourage schools to send private candidates to you?
We write, offering our services. There are schools that take private candidates, and there are schools that don't. There are many schools that come back to us when we contact them to say they're very grateful. We also get schools that use us when they’ve got students who want to sit an exam that you just don't offer, but we do. So they come in and sit that one. It’s a very, very wide-ranging set of candidates that we have and that’s the joy. It’s a delight.
Also don't forget the burden for the parent or the candidate or the candidate themselves when they're trying to find somewhere to sit exams. We do a lot of preparatory work as well like we meet the candidates beforehand, they come and visit the centre and things like that. You can put in all that work in advance to ensure that all those things are set up and that they have the experience you want them to have in their exams. We have that kind of space and setup to be able to give them that proper experience that they deserve.
So, what were you doing before and what brings you to exams?
That's a really good question. So basically, I joined a large high street retail bank, the one with the black horse- there are other high street retail banks out there! Probably not as many on the high street as they once were. I spent 30 years man and boy in the bank, and then I got towards 50 and thought, gee, you know what, I want to do something totally different. There was a job advert for an exams officer with Tutors & Exams. And I thought, I'll read the spec. I thought, yeah, okay, I get that. You had to be methodical, organised, all those things. I thought yeah, I’m that.
I applied and they gave me the job. And I joined in November 2019, which will mean absolutely nothing to anybody. Except for if I tell you that after four months, in March 2020, Gavin Williamson made that announcement to say there will be no exams. And there I was three or four months into my job. I got a text from a former colleague, saying, say, Simon, you're an exams officer without exams. We had private candidates who might have been taught by a distance learning provider or an online school, or tutor- there was no process.
But what was really interesting was so four months in, you start to realise the mettle of the owners of the company and the management team because there wasn't a process for private candidates. They got onto the Department for Education, they got on to Ofqual and JCQ. And all the awarding organizations went guys, private candidates, what's going on? We were able to agree a process with them to get private candidates a CAG. And I have to say, I have never worked harder. If I thought I was moving into a new role, where maybe after 30 years in banking, it was going to be a little bit quieter. I have to say that summer, I have never worked so hard. And what makes it rewarding is that there was the possibility that without the involvement of the senior management then perhaps private candidates might not have got grades, but they did. We were able to grade thousands of candidates that summer. It was incredible.
They were able to continue their academic journey, whether it was to do A Levels at a college, whether it was to go to university, or whether it was for a career change, or whatever- we were able to support those candidates. There's still an email that I got way after all the process had finished and everything was done and dusted, from a father saying, I've only just heard about you, my daughter needs her A Level grades to go to university, and there was nothing we could do. Although we'd helped thousands, It was that one that still resonates.
Then came the year of the TAG of course, which obviously Boris was kind enough to announce in early January that there wasn’t going to be exams that year- so there was a bit more notice, but it was still incredibly busy. And then of course exams were back from 2022 onwards, but by then I was I was Business Development Manager and then became the Sales and Marketing Director- so I obviously barely got the chance to run any exams!
If I'm right in understanding this Simon, you are all quite hands on deck as well aren't you like when it when it gets to the pinch points in exam season?
I’ve got my hands dirty. There's five big days with the GCSE Maths and English. They’ve asked me to go and run one of the alternate sites, and I love it. It's great.
When you were talking about doing 20,000 steps a day, I was thinking yeah, I get that. Where we run the alternate sites, quite often we have to put the desk up the night before, then we run it. And then, because it’s not our premises, we’re hosting the exam there, we’d have to drop all the desks. And there’s something quite wrong about setting the desk up at eight o’clock in the evening and then dropping them at midday the next day,
But that’s what it is about. The whole Tutors & Exams team, from the owners of the company all the way through the team. That's what we do to make sure that we can host candidates to sit their exams, and that’s the support.
I think the best bit is the exam days. I think it’s great. You see the candidates. And if you do the same site and you do it a few times, you get the same people and parents coming back. You get to build a bit of a rapport and it’s lovely. It’s definitely the best part.
I think the norm is a positive kind of atmosphere around exams. Is that your experience?
I think it’s 50:50. There’s people that want to get the grade, they need to progress, the want to go to university, they want that career change. For some on that first exam day they are so very nervous. They don’t quite know what to expect. By the end of the summer, it’s as if you see them grow as individuals, and the way they deal with it is admirable. It’s very rewarding.
How do you see the future for private exam centres?
I genuinely think that there’ll always be a place for a private exam centre, because there are those that sit outside mainstream education. And as long as they exist, private exam centres will exist. I read an article on BBC News a couple of weeks ago that said that the number that have left mainstream educated to be home educated is still growing
So I guess by definition, the private exam centre will still exist. I think one of the challenges that will start to present itself over the coming years is online exams. That’s kind of starting to get a little bit of momentum.
It hasn’t arrived in any great shape or form yet, but I think you have to take a step back and technology is overtaking everything. But then how many kids use laptops day to day, and how many actually do still write? So there’s a balance to be found there, but we will prepare ourselves should there be this requirement going forward. We do CPACS for A-Level, working with 5 schools across the country. CPAC is the requirement to sit the practical element of A-Level Biology, Chemistry, or Physics. We also offer field trips for A-Level Geography and Environmental Studies in Lincolnshire. As long as all these elements are still out there and people can’t access it through mainstream education, the requirement for a private exam centre will still very much exist.
As exams evolve- and that will be down to the awarding bodies- I certainly see there’s very much a place for the private exam centre moving forward. It’s how that looks in 5, 10 years from now. That will be the interesting thing. But, again, as long as there’s still a large number of people who sit outside mainstream education and need to sit their exams in a safe environment, which we offer, then there will always be a private exam centre. It’s a fascinating time to working in exams.
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If you’d like to find out more about Simon Cherriman and Tutors & Exams visit: Private Candidate Exam Centre - AQA - EDEXCEL - OCR - Cambridge (tutorsandexams.uk)
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